Month: May 2005

Categories
Just Shelley

Meme cross-fire

I am now caught in the crossfires of two memes: one having to do with books and a deserted island; the other having to do with music. Rather than answer each individually, I’ve decided to combine them into one post, thereby blurring the trail and breaking the ‘meme hex’.

I was passed the music meme by Dori Smith, Jewel at Jewel’s Web Graphics and Dougal Campbell. Answering the questions given:

Total volume of music files on my computer: 344M. Yes, just 344M. The only music I have on my machine is what I’ve loaded to create one of my few attempts at mixing, or what I’ve downloaded from iTunes. I never listen to music from my computer.

The last CD I bought It’s been so long since I’ve bought a CD, I’m not sure what the last one was. I think it might have been the Norah Jones: Feels Like Home. I can definitively say that the last song I downloaded was this.

Holding on

Song playing right now The song “Sixteen Tons”, written by Merle Travis and sung by Tennesse Ernie Ford; in ad on television, where GE attempts to make coal mining into something sexy and environmentally sound. I hate the message, am jaw dropped amazed at the hutzpah of both the campaign and visuals –but love that song.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me This is a tougher one.

Every time I start out on a trip I play Gimme some loving’ by the Spencer Davis group. Not sure why, but I know that my trip will be jinxed if I don’t play this song when I start.

The Beatle’s song Michelle is not a favorite song, but it had a significant impact on me–it was the reason I changed my name from Michelle to Shelley. And if we are to ever meet some day, whatever you do, do not hum, mouth, whisper, or play this song.

As for other songs, there are so many that I love and are important to me. I guess the ones I have particularly enjoyed listening to recently are Breathe (2am) by Anna Nalick; Me & Bobby McGee by Janis Joplin (”Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…”); and Cat in the Window by Petula Clark–a personal anthem.

Now, on to the books.

I was passed the book meme by Loren Webster and Ken Camp. I gave a lot of thought to this meme–perhaps more than one should.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

There are so many beautiful books I would want to memorize, to preserve against destruction. However, when faced with a society that could condone the burning of books, truth has to matter more than beauty. But what is the ultimate book on truth? This one I couldn’t figure out, because I don’t think it’s been written yet.

After all, look around: at the killings in Iraq; untreated AIDs in Africa; our own homeless. Humanity hasn’t grown enough to write the ultimate book on truth.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character

Yes, indeedy! I have had a crush or two among the weblogging community, and though the gentlemen aren’t fictional, they are most definitely characters.

The last book you bought?

All these memes must assume you have a great deal of discretionary income. Either that, or they’re planted by Amazon. Anyway, I believe my last book purchased was 60 Hikes within 60 Miles of St. Louis. I usually only buy hiking books; anything else I check out from the library.

What are you currently reading

I just started what promises to be a wonderful book, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maquire.

Five books you would take to a deserted island

I thought about this for a long time, running all the books I have read and enjoyed through my mind. I have several favorite books, but also knew if I was stuck with any book for any length of time, I would grow weary of it at first, and then loath it in the end.

Like the other pragmatic souls who have answered this question, I would want one of the books to be a survival guide. Most people have mentioned the Army Survival Manual, but I rather like what I’ve read about the SAS Survival Guide.

When I was searching for a survival guide, I found an interesting survival book list at Amazon, which included books such as Wilderness Survival, The Worst Case Scenario Survival Book, The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide, and The Zombie Survival Guide. The latter book proves there is no subject that can’t end up as a book.

Ultimately, though, I decided that if I were going to be stuck on a deserted island, I would want the one survival guide and four large journals with blank, unlined pages. I would then use the journals to write my own books; and if I were to get tired of them over time, I would carefully erase the pages, one by one, and write new stories.

My thank you for those kind enough to pass the memes on to me, and apologies for the lateness of the answer. As for who to turn these memes to in turn, like my books on the island, I leave the spaces for these names blank and let those who are interested fill in their names.

So I’ll pass this on to the last five people who have left comments (with a web site–sorry Dan and Ed):

Denise Howell
Frank Paynter
Kafkaesquí
Scott Reynen
Dave Winer

Categories
Burningbird

I heard your pain

Well, I heard your pain and have modified my Burningbird theme to something I hope is a bit easier to read. To be honest, when I was tired and had been working on the computer for some time, even I found my site to be overly bold and colorful.

Yeah and the design was a little tough on the eyes, too.

The original design featured too much of the ‘wings’ of flames to the left, and that was a bit overpowering. I’ve made the design much smaller, and fitted it into the title. I still have the flirty little flip to the right, though. I am not giving up my flirty little flip to the right. Besides, I like my design ‘breaking out of the box’, so to speak.

I’ve added more gray, which should help tone down the bright colors, and also darkened the blue and the orange. In fact, these colors I did ‘borrow’ from Corante–I liked them better than the too light colors I had originally. These were getting overwhelmed by the design.

I like the modifications. It’s not as professional as the Corante theme, and I think I might put Zoë back into the sidebar (I love that photo)–but I don’t believe the new look will drive any reader to want to …yank their eyes out of their head, either.

As for the issues brought up about the use of Creative Commons, my appreciations to Denise Howell for taking time to chat about them. Perhaps the CC folks will benefit from this exchange. Or they won’t and we’ll have opportunities for new ‘themes’ and other exciting adventures in the future.

Categories
Technology Weblogging

First beta release

I’ve just uploaded the first beta release of Wordform, under a build I’ve named “Sklodowska-Curie”, after the famous Madame Curie. The sidebar has a link to the download file at SourceForge.

I’ve decided to keep Wordform in perpetual beta release, to match current accepted practice as defined by Google and other fine companies. By doing this, I do my part to completely obfuscate the meaning behind such terms as ‘alpha’, ‘beta’, and ‘production’. In addition, the users will be excited about using a product that is in a constant state of uncertainty and doubt, but at the same time, fresh and sparkly new — no matter how old the source is. Best of all, if for some reason it breaks, I can point to the ‘beta’ and just shrug.

We all win.

Having said this, the build is stable, and I’ve used it to create new weblogs, as well as port both Movable Type and WordPress weblogs. I’ve been running the functionality for some time and have had few problems. Note, though, that I only have my two eyes looking at the code. If eyes other than mine want to look for bugs and, more importantly, any problems with security, I’d appreciate it.

I’m starting to put together documentation, but it’s light right now. Check back as the documentation tree grows from an acorn into a mighty tree…and about as fast.

I am still the only developer associated with this project, so be forewarned that if I’m not available, there is no support for Wordform. Still, it is open source and I would hope someone would adopt it if I get hit by a beer truck.

Categories
Copyright

The copyright theme

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I thought I would take my new Wordform theme out for a spin, let you all see what it looks like. It’s a work in progress, so it may not show correctly in all browsers.

I was inspired by the look at Corante’s Between Lawyers. Well, actually more than inspired — this look is almost a direct copy of the existing layout and style sheet from the site.

I got the inspiration for the new theme when the good folks at Between Lawyers were debating whether to include a Creative Commons license at their site. When they did, they added the license into the page with the addition of a note that Unless otherwise expressly stated, all material included in this weblog and its archives is licensed under a Creative Commons License. I looked to see if there was a copyright notice for the stylesheet and look, but couldn’t find anything within the page. I then assumed that since other copyright information wasn’t provided that abrogated my ‘borrowing’ of the look, it was fine to go ahead.

According to the license they have I must attribute this design to them (done), not use it in a commercial work (done), and not build upon or derive any work from it. This latter part is tricky because what does ‘build upon’ and ‘derive’ mean in the context of a style sheet? I assumed it means use the original stylesheet settings, which I have done — actually copying the original from Corante. Now whether me creating a new theme on the Corante stylesheet is ‘building upon’ the site’s look is a different story.

In the end I decided that I wasn’t building upon so much as redistributing the look, very similar to copying text from the site and republishing it in various weblogs. In this regard, then, I feel I am complying with the letter of the law. As for complying with the spirit of the law–hard to say: I’m not a lawyer, don’t play one on TV, and only have my judgment to go by in interpreting the license.

I will admit, though, that this was a lesson to me in the uses of CC licenses and how they are attached to specific items. Right now, most CC licenses are just plunked into a web page without any regard to precision–which, considering the nature of a CC license, always stuck me as a little odd.

My own use of CC licenses is much more restrictive. For instance, I add CC licenses for each specific component of the page I want to license, whether it is an image or the text of a post. Since I have full support for complex rich metadata in my weblogging tool, and don’t have to worry about adding multiple blocks of RDF/XML to my web pages, I can add as many license blocks as I want for each. To make it simple to discover the CC licensed objects, I even provide an alternative view of my metadata, called My World of Freebies that lists out the items per entry that are licensed.

Instead of RDF, I could have used microformats, and just added a “rel” tag pointing to the license to each item (image or text block)–this is what the Creative Commons folks are suggesting. However, without understanding what “rel” means in this context (after all, we have seen the “rel” attribute used for “nofollow”, as well as “tag” for Technorati tags) and ensuring that we all share a consistent understanding of how it is used, it’s use is still very imprecise.

I had planned on calling the new theme “Corante”, but decided that a better name would be the “Copyright Theme”. My thanks to Corante, though, for giving it to me.

screenshot of the Corante theme.

(By the way, I’m taking recommendations for Industry News and Industry Insiders.)

Categories
Weblogging

Wordform: First beta release

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’ve just uploaded the first beta release of Wordform, under a build I’ve named “Sklodowska-Curie”, after the famous Madame Curie. The sidebar has a link to the download file at SourceForge.

I’ve decided to keep Wordform in perpetual beta release, to match current accepted practice as defined by Google and other fine companies. By doing this, I do my part to completely obfuscate the meaning behind such terms as ‘alpha’, ‘beta’, and ‘production’. In addition, the users will be excited about using a product that is in a constant state of uncertainty and doubt, but at the same time, fresh and sparkly new — no matter how old the source is. Best of all, if for some reason it breaks, I can point to the ‘beta’ and just shrug.

We all win.

Having said this, the build is stable, and I’ve used it to create new weblogs, as well as port both Movable Type and WordPress weblogs. I’ve been running the functionality for some time and have had few problems. Note, though, that I only have my two eyes looking at the code. If eyes other than mine want to look for bugs and, more importantly, any problems with security, I’d appreciate it.

I’m starting to put together documentation, but it’s light right now. Check back as the documentation tree grows from an acorn into a mighty tree…and about as fast.

I am still the only developer associated with this project, so be forewarned that if I’m not available, there is no support for Wordform. Still, it is open source and I would hope someone would adopt it if I get hit by a beer truck.